Tuesday, May 15, 2012

"Church Without Fences" Foreword

(My co-pastor Terry Austin has just written a marvelous reflection of the theology behind Bread, our new faith community here in Fort Worth. The book is called "Church Without Fences" and will be out soon. My dear friend and spiritual teacher, Glenn Hinson, graciously wrote this foreword:)

Alfred Loisy, a great Roman Catholic New Testament scholar,
once said, “Jesus preached the Kingdom of God, and the Church was the
result.” He meant that Jesus didn’t
envision a vast hierarchical structure spread throughout the world. None of us can say what he intended with
reference to church. From his disciples
to our own day we who believe have tried to figure out how best to bring to
expression in our times and circumstances what he, still living among us,
wants. Bread Fellowship, founded in Fort
Worth, Texas, by Charlie Johnson and Terry Austin is one of the most remarkable
creative efforts to do what Jesus wanted that I have seen or studied in church
history.

Bread
Fellowship is clearly an alternative way of being church. They have no aspirations to become a
mega-church or even what sociologist Wade Clark Roof has called meta-church, a
church with traditional structures.
Rather, they center everything on Jesus and decline to delineate a
circumference. They are a church without
walls, inclusive rather than exclusive.
Such an approach, of course, suggests that they, like the Apostle Paul,
have confidence that God, the Living Christ, will do something we humans can’t
do, namely, transform lives. Although
both Johnson and Austin have experienced successful ministries in large
traditional congregations, they here serve in modest ways as facilitators of
this fellowship, whose center is Jesus Christ.

“Bread”
reminds me of the meals Jesus met with his disciples to eat.The “last” supper was not the only meal they ate together.Breaking bread together facilitated
fellowship.Notice in the Gospels how
often Jesus ate with people; that bonded him to them.And I think that must happen in Bread
Fellowship, where they meet on Sunday evenings and, as a rule, observe the
Lord’s Supper together.It happens that
this kind of approach is reaching a group of people somewhat turned off by
churches that define themselves in terms of circumference rather than by the
center, Jesus.

A very
important element in the modus operandi
of Bread Fellowship is hospitality. Like
Jesus himself, it is non-judgmental.
Censoriousness all too easily creeps into church life, just as it
pervades our whole culture. The
consequence is partisanship and bitter battles, both

public and private. But here is a church in which the keynote
is: “You are accepted.” Bread Fellowship
sounds amazingly like early Christian communities before very much organization
took over and people started clamoring to run things according to their rules.

What about
the future of a creative community like this?
It won’t supplant mega-churches, meta-churches, and a vast array of
other church organizations and institutions in America any more than early
Christian “house churches” displaced the state cultus or the oriental religions
in the Roman Empire. All of them
continued for centuries. But Bread
Fellowship is discharging a mission in Fort Worth the other churches aren’t and
can’t do. It functions much like those
early Christian communities that met in homes or wherever they could find a
place, even in the catacombs under the city.
So long as they keep Christ at the center and fellowship with him and
with one another as the focus, they will have something to offer the world, the
world doesn’t already have more of than it needs.

By the way,
this is an engaging and readable book.
You will find not only a good picture of Bread Fellowship but also an
open and honest introduction to Terry Austin.
I have not met Terry personally, but I feel after reading his book that
I know him. I have known Charlie Johnson
from many years ago, when he took classes and came often to talk in my office
at Southern Seminary. I vouch for
anything he undertakes in ministry.

About Me

Charlie Johnson is the founding co-pastor of Bread, a non-traditional faith community in Fort Worth, Texas.
He has been in pastoral ministry for over 30 years, serving with churches in Kentucky and Texas, including the Trinity Baptist Church of San Antonio (2001-2006) and the Second Baptist Church of Lubbock (1989-2001).
He taught preaching at McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University (2006-2008), and was inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Board of Preachers in 2008.
He is married to Jana and has three children. Chad (34) is married to Mary Beth Lancaster of Oklahoma and manages the Rocky Creek Ranch west of San Angelo, TX. Cliff (30) works the oil fields of Midland, Texas. Chris Anne (27) works and lives in Fort Worth. He has a granddaughter, Corley Elizabeth, age 3, and a grandson, Clayton Foster, 6 months.